Your final straw to deconverting?

My question to you today: What was the final moment, action or realization that made you completely confident in your deconversion. In other words, what pushed you from agnostic (or belief, if it was sudden for you) to atheist.

For me it was a realization in philosophy class while we were studying philosophy of religion. Seeing how the arguments against god seemed much more logical and sound pushed me into a complete confidence. Since then I have been doing research to further my understanding of atheism and religion.

For me, I'd been raised christian (Presbyterian), so I had no reason to not be christian because I didn't know anything else. The seeds of disbelief began to be planted in 6th grade when we were learning about ancient greek and roman gods and how they were created as a way to explain the unexplained. This started me thinking and wondering what made Christianity any different. I stuck with Christianity in the end, but gradually grew out of it just like i'd grown out of believing in Santa.

After I graduated high school I went to England and spent a 5th year at a boarding school out there. I experienced for the first time a christianity other than that I'd grown up with. Church had always been a place of good people, love, learning morality, and having a personal relationship with god and jesus. The church services I attended in England were more similar to catholisism in the way that the services were very ritualistic and traditional. I absolutely hated that aspect to the service and it made it all feel incredibly fake and pointless to me.

It also finally hit home that Christianity was only as good as how people interpret it...so my church at home had been great not because of anything to do with the bible, but instead because of the people. Every place I went, there was a different version of christianity, and with so many versions, it couldn't be anything true, instead it was just human interpretations. If you strip away all the aspects that make church religious, you are left with either nothing, or in the case of a genuinely good church, people learning to be better people and loving each other; all things that can be done, and can be done better, without religion.

As i said before, about growing out of religion, it was somehting that became common sense as I matured, became more educated, and left fantasies behind. I have zero patience now for religion as I can't help seeing religious people as childish and in denial of the truth.

While attending Catholic elementary school, I got a steaming heap of Jesus served up on a daily basis. I quickly realized that the story being pushed was less coherent than my comic books, and not nearly as cool as the gods in Bullfinch's Mythology, or in my beaten-up copy of Deities & Demigods. It got me thinking, and I was a geeky kid that also liked science. I didn't have a defining moment, but it became clear pretty quickly that claims with evidence to back them up had alot more credibility than claims that were clearly fantasy. Unconvincing, poorly planned & inconsistent fantasies at that. I was a solidly self-identified atheist in the middle of redneck land before 7th grade.

After living out of my truck for six months in one of the toughest cities in the country, I took a long look at myself and everything I had accomplished with my hard work, blood, sweat, and tears and I realized I had done it all on my own and I was not going to give any fucking credit to a piece of shit god that was leaving countless of others suffering in those streets.

I had been reading Carlos Castaneda and I was learning to look into myself for power and wisdom and that is exactly where I had found it. Funny story that goes with that... In one of Castaneda's books some Fundie pasted a Christian message on the first page of the book calling it a lie and words from the devil sent to turn us away from Christ. I laughed and complained to the Librarian.

Prior to my profound experience that I am about to share, I was already most comfortable with the term "atheist" but still struggled with defending myself against religious bullying. Pregnant with my third child, I was determined to manifest a painless birth experience. My prenatal journey began with a hypnosis session where my sub-conscious mind was given an opportunity to view labor and birth differently. The unasssisted home birth of my son was not only painless, it was orgasmic! Not a whisper of physical discomfort accompanied the descent of this sacred child. My manifestation of the perfect birth defied God's curse against women that we shall know pain and complication in child-birth all the days of their lives...I am eternally grateful that I am not bound by that vicious scene at the garden, all on account of some little apple!

For me it was when I allowed myself to doubt in the first place. That opened a door or a window or whatever for me to actually look at other options. I had always doubted, since I was a child none of it made sense, but I wouldn't even admit it to myself for fear of god hearing my thoughts and spitting me out of his mouth someday. lol. Once I allowed myself that freedom to doubt, I started learning about all the other religion(s) of the world (from the world instead of from the xtian community/church.) I allowed myself to realize that the bible-god was just one of many beliefs and it was unlikely that it happened to be the right one, but I was still afraid to actually admit that to myself. I still wanted to believe and not burn in a possible hell so I started thinking that maybe just the book was wrong, but there still was a god or something out there.

I think the final thing that hit me and pushed me to be this 6/7 atheist that I am today was the realization that I had been asking god to help me for twenty years and he never did. Science has helped me more in a week than god did in all the years I could form words into prayer.